A surveying instrument, for example, a motor drive total station has a function to automatically track a moving target. This surveying instrument is provided with a light emitting section that irradiates tracking light and a light receiving section that receives reflected light of the tracking light, and acquires a lit image and an unlit image and obtains a difference between them, and detects a position with a deviation falling within a certain value from a visual axis of a telescope, as a target position (Patent Literature 1).
Performance of the tracking function described above is evaluated by attaching a target to a tool capable of being rotationally moved and reciprocated and making the surveying instrument track movement of the target, or placing the surveying instrument on a rotatable and tiltable table and operating it to track a fixed target.